My St Johns River

but had for the first-time ever no stress over it! For me, this was a small affirmation that what we’re doing here matters.

So, somehow I miscalculated my budget, leaving my credit union account 94-cents short for the payments I made toward the bills, home etc. I didn’t realize because my work wrote my health insurance reimbursement check and I didn’t have time to deposit it this morning and simultaneously my last bill payment hit the account today. Anywho, the cu automatically transferred over 94-cents from the savings (which holds my EF) and although they normally charge a fee I am sure they’ll waive it as a courtesy when I go up tomorrow (gotta love credit unions).

This brought me back to a time when I remember living off overdraft “protection” – as though it was some sort of high interest loan. Just a few years ago I remember almost every month feeling thankful that Chase Bank would allow me to OD $300. But then I remember the fear of each $35 OD fee, and then the extended OD fees of $27 a week, and sometimes the insufficient funds fees when I would go over the $300 (or sometimes just because the fees ate at such a large portion of the $300 that I didn’t realize I was there yet!). Their courtesy had me always behind and always “needing” to owe them a little money in the future to pay the bills today. How backwards this was!

Seeing my account in the red for a moment today, not being panicked because i KNOW what bills needed to be covered this pay period have been already, knowing I had some money in savings to cover the error, and having a check and cash in my wallet… well, the me 3 years ago would not have imagined such a thing.